They started popping up in Dana Stein's Newsfeed about a year ago. Among the baby birthdays and engagement statuses, she started to see a new genre of Facebook post: before-and-after pics. One of Stein's good friends posted them, as did some friends of friends, all sweaty in sports bras, showing off abs where mini muffin tops used to be. Splashed across some were rainbow-colored calls to action — "Are you ready for a change? I know I was!"— followed by tales of their weight loss "journeys."

Hearing about other people's endorphin highs on Facebook was irritating for Stein, who was in a fitness rut and battling mild symptoms of Crohn's disease. "I would say, 'If they invite me to another group, if they send me another message, I will scream. I will de-friend them,'" remembers Stein, 32, a marketing manager in New York.

But eventually Stein's annoyance turned to curiosity, then motivation, which led to messaging a friend to say: "Can you help me?"

This is the viral power of Team Beachbody, the fitness empire built on the idea that your real, flawed friends are more effective fitspo than any celebrity could be. Stein's friends were Team Beachbody "coaches," successful customers-turned-salespeople for its fitness packages, which include workout DVDs (the popular 21-Day Fix demands 30-minute daily sessions, switching up cardio, weights, Pilates, and yoga); superfood shake powders called Shakeology; and "simple eating," portion-controlled meal plans. Packages range from $140 to $245 for workout DVDs, shakes, meal ideas, and coaching. Coaches get a 25 percent cut for every sale they bring in, plus, as they build a network of new customers beneath them, a cut of the sales of each of those customers who become selling coaches themselves. This pyramid setup garners criticism from some who call Team Beachbody a "scheme." And because anyone can sign up online to be a coach, some licensed nutritionists express concern about uncertified people signing into Facebook and dispensing health advice at random.

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"It never ceases to amaze me that anyone would fall for anything like this," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University. "It's about making money."

But coaches insist every post is an attempt to change lives. To recruit new customers, or "challengers," as they're called in the cult of Team Beachbody, coaches post sweaty selfies after finishing Team Beachbody DVDs with action movie names like TurboFire and Insanity (a promotional technique that the company encourages and coaches say they find effective). They post thermoses full of chocolate Shakeology, trays of baked sweet potato fries, and clenched biceps. Then, after anywhere from 21 days (for 21-Day Fix clients) to 90 days or more (for P90X3 clients), they post their before-and-afters. The ideal Team Beachbody "after" look is lean and toned, with sculpted biceps and quads. But many afters don't look like celebrity beach bodies; they just look markedly better than the befores. (Skeptics accuse people of faking their before-and-afters, but devotees say Instagram filters and power poses can only go so far.) Challengers often bounce from one workout DVD bundle to the next, sometimes doing two cycles of 21-Day Fix, for example, before graduating to P90X3.

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Stein and her friends are among Team Beachbody's "millions" of customers, a rep says. And while there are other fitness programs harnessing the power of social media — Isagenix and Herbalife both sell meal replacement shakes through independent salespeople who use Facebook as a platform — Team Beachbody benefits from a $1.3 billion parent company, Beachbody, launched in 1998, the maker of DVDs like P90X, which it sells online and via infomercial. Beachbody's P90X video sales alone have been estimated in excess of $700 million. (The program got a PR boost in 2012 as then-vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan's workout of choice.) But last year, Team Beachbody, the coach-driven side of the business, surpassed the original Beachbody in sales, according to a Beachbody rep, though he wouldn't reveal exact sales figures.

"The coaches are smarter than us. They really understand how to tell a story on social."

"The coaches are smarter than us," says Michael Neimand, Beachbody's executive vice president of network marketing. "They really understand how to tell a story on social." Many coaches don't overtly use the word "Beachbody" in their Facebook callouts. Instead, they drop cryptic references to the "amazing program" making them look and feel so fantastic.

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This personal approach was part of Beachbody's goal in creating Team Beachbody. Beachbody CEO and founder Carl Daikeler, an infomercial industry veteran who worked in the late '90s as a consultant at Guthy Renker, the company behind Proactiv, lives the brand with an eight-pack of his own and credits P90X for a dramatic transformation. Back in the pre-Facebook early aughts, Daikeler created a "virtual gym" at the Beachbody website called WOWY (Work Out With You), where customers doing Beachbody DVDs could befriend each other. On message boards, "One person would say, 'I started P90x and I'm so sore, it's only day three, I don't think I can do it anymore,' and someone else would come on and say, 'You gotta push through. By the time you get the day 17, you're gonna start to feel better,'" Neimand says, adding that Daikeler soon realized that "the consumers were the best brand ambassadors we could ask for."

Daikeler launched Team Beachbody in 2007 with a few hundred coaches nationwide. In the eight years since, online (over)sharing has reached a fever pitch, and the explosion of Facebook has made it easier than ever to sell your friends Team Beachbody. Today, there are more than 340,000 coaches, an estimated 75 percent of whom are women, according to Neimand. Most of those women are 25 to 39 years old, Neimand says, some of whom are becoming millionaires living and selling the Team Beachbody brand.

I wasn't actively trying to make it a business ... I just started sharing what was happening with me — 'Oh my gosh, I'm wearing these pants from high school!'

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Melissa Spar Pipitone, a 34-year-old stay-at-home mom in Brooklyn, is on track to make six figures this year as an elite "diamond-level" Team Beachbody coach, with hundreds of challengers on her team. Two years ago, Pipitone was 50 pounds overweight after two pregnancies, with no time to get to the gym. Her high school friend's glowing posts about Team Beachbody's Ultimate Reset Cleanse, a bundle of supplements and a nutrition plan, persuaded her to try the regimen, and she posted on Facebook about her 16-pound weight loss. "I wasn't actively trying to make it a business," she says. "I just started sharing what was happening with me — 'Oh my gosh, I'm wearing these pants from high school!'"

Pipitone now inspires her challengers with her triumphs ("It's Sunday 5:30 am and I am UP and ready to go. Did I want to stay in bed? Absolutely! But more then [sic] that I want to reach my goals," she posted recently on Facebook) and endears them with her struggles ("As you can see, black & white cookies & I got pretty close before the reset went down," she wrote in a recent before-and-after).

Many coaches and challengers start Team Beachbody packages at the same time, forming what are called "challenge groups," and they share their highs (sweaty selfies, healthy recipes) and their setbacks ("Oops, I just ate a cupcake.") throughout the program.

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"You feel like you have somebody to report to," says Kristy Bird, 34, a lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina, whose coach is Pipitone. "I wake up in the morning and see that people have already done their workout, and I want to be able to post my selfie and tell them that I did mine too." Bird is now a coach herself.

Melissa Fay, 33, a teacher on Long Island who is also part of Pipitone's network, says the group kept her accountable. "Like, 'Wow, she lost five pounds this week? Shit, I only lost three.' I would text my coach and say, 'OK, so I ate this, this, and this. Do you have any other recommendations?'"

Fay recognizes that Team Beachbody can be a serious source of annoyance to others, due to the volume of posts on Facebook and what some feel is their smug nature. "I used to hate other people's posts," she says. "I thought it was all a big cult." But after having her son a year ago, she could no longer spend the two to three hours daily in the gym that she used to, and a friend's posting about the 21-Day Fix program turned her onto Team Beachbody. Fay now posts updates daily.

"My best friend is the biggest hater," Fay says. "But I think that ultimately she's just a little bit jealous that I look like I do now."

Courtesy of Melissa Fay

But even some challengers admit to finding the social media posts a bit much. "I feel like my Facebook timeline is judging me," says Lara Cuoco, 33, of her friends' Team Beachbody posts. "If I'm choosing to have a cupcake or a glass or wine, those pictures haunt me. Like, 'Don't do this. Be fit. Be fit. #CleanEat.'"

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A working mom of a 1-year-old son, Cuoco was enticed by her friend Fay's posts and bought the program from her. She says the program has helped her lose 20 pounds, but she turned off the challenge group notifications on Facebook and has never posted a before-and-after. "I feel like I don't need to," she says. "The results are good enough for me."

Facebook posts might convince your friends to join Team Beachbody, but they're not necessarily a healthy form of motivation. "With social media, the pressure to look perfect all the time has skyrocketed," says Mindy Haar, Ph.D., a registered dietician and director of program development in interdisciplinary health sciences at the New York Institute of Technology. "I truly believe a person has to want to make changes to embark on fitness and should not be shamed into it."

Haar also says Team Beachbody's open-door approach to becoming a coach is worrisome. In lieu of an official nutrition or diet certification program for coaches, the company says it "provides a variety of training materials and sessions that coaches tap into to enhance their experience." But Haar says that, ideally, people should be consulting a credentialed health professional who has years of training in physiology and nutrition. "An untrained health coach can easily overlook potential health hazards," she says. Team Beachbody says it has "a policy of telling coaches that they are not in a position to recommend, diagnose, or advise beyond their own professional training" (i.e. registered trainers, nurses), according to Neimand. Instead, they function more as cheerleaders for Team Beachbody programs.

If a Team Beachbody coach were to go rogue, posting damaging or body-shaming statuses, Beachbody says the company's compliance department, which monitors coaches' social media posts, would step in. Infractions could include suspending or firing a coach. "This isn't frequent," Neimand says, "but it has occurred."

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Haar and Nestle, the NYU professor, also took a look at the Beachbody shakes and cleanses. Surveying the ingredients in Shakeology, which include whey protein and vitamins A through E, Nestle said "the shakes are a standard nutrient supplement with herbs added. Such supplements have been proven time and again to be powerful placebos" — more liquid inspiration than scientifically proven weight loss formula. Haar noted that it is low in fat, high in fiber, and a good source of protein, but that there are still "several unknowns" about the laundry list of superfoods in the shakes, which includes flax, cacao, and spirulina. Even professionals are not sure yet how much of these ingredients is safe to consume each day, she says. "Some may interact with certain medications and some may cause allergy in certain individuals," Haar explains. "One should not assume that if something is 'natural,' it's fine."

Courtesy of Kristy Bird

Earlier this year, after reviewing the results of ongoing internal testing and research, Team Beachbody removed amaranth (a plant) and tulsi (holy basil) from its Shakeology powders due to concerns about its ability to source consistently effective supplies of each, the company said in an email to customers. And recently, after a "thorough internal risk assessment and recommendation from our Scientific Advisory Board," Team Beachbody decided to remove acai from the shakes, due to its links with Chagas disease, a heart and central nervous system disease spread by parasites.

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And while Beachbody says Shakeology is made with gluten-free ingredients, Kaitlin Sawyer, a 26-year-old freelance writer in Honolulu, Hawaii, who has a gluten allergy, says drinking chocolate Shakeology led to her having immediate diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, "which is exactly what happens when I consume gluten of any kind," she says. Sawyer later realized that Team Beachbody advises customers that while the shake powder is made with gluten-free ingredients, it's not manufactured in a facility that is certified gluten-free. "It's a really fine line, but something that made a huge difference to me," says Sawyer. "As soon as I eliminated Shakeology from my diet, I stopped getting sick." She still occasionally does the Insanity workouts.

Neither Nestle nor Haar found health concerns in the supplements in Team Beachbody's Ultimate Reset Cleanse but noted that one of the main ingredients, turmeric, is found in many spice racks — "You're much better off sprinkling this on vegetables you're about to roast and/or adding it to soup and sauces," Haar says. Other ingredients, she says, include "enzymes that the body builds on its own with no need to ingest from outside sources."

"There is really no such physiological phenomenon as a 'cleanse,'" Haar says. "The best way to assure that your body properly gets rid of waste products is to eat a high-fiber diet and whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables along with plenty of water."

As for the diets emphasizing portion control and "simple eating," particularly the color-coded Tupperwares that 21-Day Fix challengers use to measure their food, "it's an interesting trick," according to Nestle, one that may help people learn healthy portion size. "Eating less works every time," she quips. And when it comes to coaches' passionate social media posting, Nestle says the cheering-on part is "demonstrably useful." The most integral of Team Beachbody ingredients, after all, maybe its coaches' enthusiasm.

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Looking back, Stein says, "It wasn't just that [my friends doing Team Beachbody] were fitter and thinner, it was that they looked healthy and they looked happy and seemed like these awesome, positive people." Last month, after a few rounds of Team Beachbody's 21-Day Fix, she shared a poignant before-and-after post. Wearing a black sports bra, yoga pants, and a huge smile, she announced she had lost 30 pounds and become a happier, better wife.

"I wasn't going to post this on Facebook (words like vulnerable & scared come to mind), but then I remembered that this all happened due to social media," she wrote. "So it's time to pay it forward."

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